Throwing in the towel... anybody want my IDI?

[vt951]

Throwing in the towel... anybody want my IDI? SALE PENDING

Thanks to all who gave their time and effort to help me with this truck, especially towcat, dsl_dog_catcher, and icanfixall. You guys are awesome.

But, I am officially giving up on it. I am into this truck about $1100 and can't get it running. Any reasonable offer will be entertained. Truck is located near Cincinnati, OH. PM me if you're interested. I'll only give my phone number and email address through PM.

It is an '86 F-250 SuperCab 4WD Automatic.
Unknown mileage (ODO says 73k, but that could be 273k for all I know)
Body is decent. It was a Texas truck until PO bought it (earlier this year I think). No cancer in the fenders at all. Little bit starting under passenger door. Paint is dull and has lots of nicks. Roof paint is gone (light surface rust there instead). Bed is good except the previous owner cut a big hole in it to put a 6" stack through. Brightwork is all there and good with the exception of the front fender trim has a small dent. Wheels are aftermarket black painted 16" and are in good shape. 3 of the 4 tires appear to be in good shape. The 4th tire is usable, but getting low on tread. Rear part of the exhaust is a hack job and will need to be replaced. Interior is not bad. Dash has big hole in the top middle where a speaker used to be I guess. Door panel plastic is very faded. Interior electrics all seem to work. Passenger power window regulator is bad.

PO bought the truck from TX with a bad motor. He sourced another IDI from a salvage yard and installed himself. Supposedly drove the truck and said it didn't run right, so he pulled the injectors and cleaned them. Re-installed injectors and couldn't get it to start. Replaced the injection pump and still wouldn't start. Then he sold it to me.

I verified fuel is getting to the injectors. Cleaned up the injector seats and installed new injectors. Compression test showed 300-350 psi on pass side cyls, and 150-200 on driver side cyls. There's a big thread with all details here: http://www.oilburners.net/forums/showthread.php?t=32218&highlight=newb+questions

I put the following parts into it:

- (1) new heavy duty battery (other battery tested good)
- (8) new Delphi injectors tested and pop matched by typ4
- (8) new Beru glow plugs
- new return line kit
- ignition cylinder in steering column

Previous owner put the following parts in it:
- reman'd injection pump
- glow plug controller

 

[6 Nebraska IDIs]

I've got about $5000 into my brown truck and I've got as much a right as anyone to give up on mine but I probably wont.
These engines are about as basic as you can possibly get mechanically. You have fuel to the IP, have you verified that ~6psi is getting to the filter head? These motors wont run on even 3psi, trust me I've tried it, it'll sputter and try to start but it wont happen. You'll see fuel getting to the injectors but it's not enough for the IP to pop a good fuel charge off. So check that. The other thing I'd check is if the PO was an idiot and he changed the IP, it's very possible that the IP timing gear is one or more teeth off, it will NEVER start if its retarded one or more teeth, been there done that in my younger years too. Have you tried ethering the motor to see if it would fire off that way? Is it a NA motor? If it is and you have a bottle for saline solution or contact cleaner, for eye contacts, I've also been able to fire off a motor by putting fuel in one of those bottles putting the pintel back in the bottle and squirting a mist of fuel into the intake. It WILL fire off doing this, but don't load it up, you can bend a rod pretty easily if you dump a bunch of unatomized fuel into the intake cavity. Like I said it will fire off by misting some fuel into the intake, but this is only to verify that you have a motor healthy enough to actually run, and it points to the IP being severely mistimed.
At this point I'd probably have better luck getting your truck running than getting mine to run for more than 3 days.

 

[hesutton]

I'm sorry to hear you have had so much trouble. I wonder if the timing is the problem. If the PO did the pump and removed the timing gear cover or just has the IP timing way off, it would not start or run very well.

It is a nice truck, I hope someone here can buy it and keep it in the OB family.

Heath

 

[towcat]

sorry to see it come to this especially after all your efforts. hope you find a running one in the future to play with.

 

[vt951]

I've got about $5000 into my brown truck and I've got as much a right as anyone to give up on mine but I probably wont.
These engines are about as basic as you can possibly get mechanically. You have fuel to the IP, have you verified that ~6psi is getting to the filter head? These motors wont run on even 3psi, trust me I've tried it, it'll sputter and try to start but it wont happen. You'll see fuel getting to the injectors but it's not enough for the IP to pop a good fuel charge off. So check that. The other thing I'd check is if the PO was an idiot and he changed the IP, it's very possible that the IP timing gear is one or more teeth off, it will NEVER start if its retarded one or more teeth, been there done that in my younger years too. Have you tried ethering the motor to see if it would fire off that way? Is it a NA motor? If it is and you have a bottle for saline solution or contact cleaner, for eye contacts, I've also been able to fire off a motor by putting fuel in one of those bottles putting the pintel back in the bottle and squirting a mist of fuel into the intake. It WILL fire off doing this, but don't load it up, you can bend a rod pretty easily if you dump a bunch of unatomized fuel into the intake cavity. Like I said it will fire off by misting some fuel into the intake, but this is only to verify that you have a motor healthy enough to actually run, and it points to the IP being severely mistimed.
At this point I'd probably have better luck getting your truck running than getting mine to run for more than 3 days.

It could be that you're right. I'm out of my league getting this running. I tried spaying ether in the intake while cranking, and it didn't start that way, so I think that means there's something else going on other than fuel injection timing, right? I'm just tired of working on it. Maybe somebody who knows what they're doing can buy it cheap and get it running. I'd rather see that than part this thing out. I'm sure there's more money in the parts in this thing than what I'll get for it, but I don't want to part out a truck that has potential.

 

[6 Nebraska IDIs]

Here's whatcha do. Give me a call and I'll explain the process for checking the timing gear without pulling the timing plate. Because that sounds like IP timing gear to me. You'll have to go get a small mechanics mirror and some patience. If you lived in Nebraska I'd just come over and help ya out. But we'll have to be happy with just a phone call for now.
I'll PM you my phone number.

 

[vt951]

I'm sorry to hear you have had so much trouble. I wonder if the timing is the problem. If the PO did the pump and removed the timing gear cover or just has the IP timing way off, it would not start or run very well.

It is a nice truck, I hope someone here can buy it and keep it in the OB family.

Heath

sorry to see it come to this especially after all your efforts. hope you find a running one in the future to play with.

Thanks guys. Yeah, I had high hopes that it wouldn't have been this big of a struggle. This was my first diesel, and it was going to be my tow vehicle for a project car I'm working on. I have a porsche 944 turbo that I'm swapping an LS-1 (small block chevy v8) into. Now that the car project is coming to fruition, I need all the money I can get for that, and don't have time or money to dump into the truck.

 

[sootman73]

it sounded like a compression issue too. would have been nice to hear a video of it cranking over to hear compression and speed....

 

[vt951]

Here's whatcha do. Give me a call and I'll explain the process for checking the timing gear without pulling the timing plate. Because that sounds like IP timing gear to me. You'll have to go get a small mechanics mirror and some patience. If you lived in Nebraska I'd just come over and help ya out. But we'll have to be happy with just a phone call for now.
I'll PM you my phone number.

Thanks for your offer. I'll give you a call. But, like I said, I'm throwing in the towel. If it's an easy fix, somebody buy it, fix it, and enjoy (or sell it for a profit).

Regardless of IP timing, should it fire up on ether?

 

[vt951]

it sounded like a compression issue too. would have been nice to hear a video of it cranking over to hear compression and speed....

I'll take a video when I get a chance (hopefully this evening) and will post that here.

 

[6 Nebraska IDIs]

No it wont. If the fuel is getting into the cylinders after the pistons have come up to compress it, it will not fire. You'll be getting fuel delivery into the cylinders, and will have raw fuel smoke out the exhaust, but you will never get a fire.

 

[vt951]

That's the other thing... no smoke out the exhaust at all. All that gets out the tail pipe is puffs of air.

Maybe I'm confused about the ether thing... if I were to cut fuel altogether and spray ether in the intake while cranking it, are you saying it will not fire up? Or are you saying that if the fuel injection is timed wrong, it will prevent the engine from firing, even with ether?

 

[6 Nebraska IDIs]

Ether will not fire by itself. Atleast I've never had luck with it firing on its own. Try the squirt bottle idea, heck you can even use a mist bottle for misting plants and stuff with water. They are like .25 at Walmart. Puffs of air... that doesn't make much sense to me... If you have fuel to the injectors they should be popping fuel into the cylinders and it has to go somewhere.

 

[subliminal]

how hard does it crank over? if its not cranking fast enough it will not do anything. it really sounds like your mech lift pump isnt pushing enough fuel to the ip or its not bled out because your not cranking fast/long enough. it will take several tries to get it bled.

 

[Darrin Tosh]

If it has low compression it may be getting past the rings.